Fall 2011 Roman J. Witt Residency

What if we have to accept a higher level of risk in order to benefit from technology? When the unexpected does happen, what will it look like and how will communities respond? How will we live well in a world that is increasingly complex and interconnected? 

The Witt Resident: James King

Speculative designer James King collaborates with scientists to design potential applications for their research, imagining the possible outcomes if technologies developed in the lab were adopted by people in their everyday lives. The results are objects, films and images intended to spark debate on the desirable and undesirable qualities of future technology. 

For King, the most rewarding aspect of these collaborations has been the opportunity, not just to interpret scientific research, but also to contribute to it. ​“The design process is an implicit but unrecognized aspect of the biological sciences. Through further collaborations and projects my aim is to build an explicit role for design as part of scientific practice.”

The Project: A World of Surprises

King’s project during his Witt Residency is a design and science collaboration imagining what it will be like to live with the risks created by developing technologies. Working with University of Michigan students and faculty, and the Ann Arbor community, King will stage a series of temporary installations and happenings in and around Ann Arbor that tell the story of a fictional technological accident and its ramifications. 

The project will be documented as a film, and the film will be shown in as part of a seminar held at the end of the project bringing together experts to discuss the intersection between risk, science and art / design.

E. chromi: A project James worked on in collaboration with fellow designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Cambridge University’s iGem team, exploring the wider implications of the work that the team are doing in the lab. This project is documented on its own website at http://​www​.echromi​.com.